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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a la Shmoop. Nurse Ratched's mental ward: come for the

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rest and recuperation, stay for the mind games and spirit breaking.

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It's not a very nice place.

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You know you're somewhere special when the nicest and most sympathetic person...

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...is a guy who smothers his friend to death with a pillow.

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The sheer number of unstable minds on display brings up the big question:

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Who's the looniest toon? Is it our hero, the man who aims to misbehave,

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McMurphy?

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Well, he has been institutionalized. That's usually a good sign that something's wrong

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upstairs.

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So maybe he's in a mental hospital for a reason.

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And McMurphy's brain operates on another level. He never seems to realize the danger that

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he's in, or the power that Nurse Ratched has over him...

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...even though his arch-nemesis is watching his every move, he's mostly concerned about

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baseball and women. That is, until McMurphy tries to strangle

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Ratched to death.

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Yeah... that's not gonna get him points on the sanity scale.

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But to be fair, he hasn't had an easy go of it. McMurphy's a bit of a maverick, and he

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can't stand the fact that the world's trying to squeeze him into a mold.

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Maybe all that crazy behavior is just a way for him to rebel.

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So is he really nuts, or is it, like, the system, man?

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If it is the system, doesn't that mean Nurse Ratched is the crazy one?

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Well, for starters, she's super manipulative, and her desire for power and control is definitely...

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maniacal.

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Sure, she speaks sweetly to everyone... but she's also hiding some seriously creepy monster

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eyes behind that friendly mask.

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Are we the only ones who get a "serial killer" vibe when she's around?

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Speaking of serial killing, Ratched drives two men to suicide and basically murders McMurphy

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by ordering a lobotomy.

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How does she react to all of that? With a big fat "Meh."

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But we'll hold off on saying that she's 100% certifiable. If McMurphy is a victim of the

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system, Ratched might be a victim, too.

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She has her orders, after all. But wait a sec. If McMurphy and Nurse Ratched

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are both actually sane, then what's really going on here?

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Maybe we're supposed to see that "crazy" is all about perspective.

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Sure, McMurphy is a little nutty, but his actions also make us realize how arbitrary

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"sanity" can be...

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...especially when the poster child for "having your ducks in a row" happens to be the murderous,

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mean-spirited, "Ultimate Grinch" Nurse Ratched.

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To put it another way: if Ratched is normal, we might just rather be nuts.

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So what do you think?

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Is McMurphy the bonkers one who belongs in a mental ward...

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...is Nurse Ratched a psycho herself...

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...or is crazy just a state of mind? Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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